I wonder how demoralized Solomon Alabi is right now

What happened to Solomon Alabi today against the Chicago Bull must have really demoralized him.

A Ten man roster,a blow out game and he still did not get to play this is really demoralizing for the poor rookie. Even if he may suck, the guy should have gotten some minutes to play today. This was just really sad and demoralizing.

It pissed me off too, but I was reading Doug Smith's blog and apparently they don't plan to give him much floor time. They only brought him back from the D-league because they have come to the conclusion that the D-League is worse for his development than riding the pine. I hope they will give him a chance as the season progresses but we'll just have to wait and see.

Link the the blog post-http://thestar.blogs.com/raptors/2010/12/okay-heres-the-first-thing-you-need-to-know-about-solomon-alabi-he-is-not-here-to-play-please-put-out-of-your-minds-th.html

"When Life gives you lemons, you clone those Lemons to make super lemons!"
-Scudworth

I don't think it's demoralizing, especially to a player like Alabi, he knows how good he and he knows he needs to improve and I think right now he's just glad to be back with the team as opposed to still being in the D-league. If anything, they're trying to teach him more in practice, hopefully he'll start improving because I'd like to see him come off the bench here and be a solid contributer in the future.

I do not see what is wrong with him playing in the d-league. At least he gets some burn and coaches who are able to spend more one on one time with him. He also is able to watch game tape of him playing and able to improve his technique.

I have a feeling that Jay and the rest of the coaching staff are not spending time in practice trying to develop Solo and he is just there to be an extra body in practice / water boy. Send him back to the d-league, you are paying him anyway and at least he gets to play.

The guy is a work in progress, but we are just stunting his growth by leaving him to rot on the end of our bench.

Actually, they already sent him to the D-league, and he was barely getting any play time or one-on-one practice and learning because well...he already has an NBA contract. Most of the players there are trying to get an NBA contract, and most of the coaches are hoping to maybe become an assistant for an NBA team. That's why they brought him back from the D-league, it was being detrimental to him.

Here's my question: is the d-league broken? It seems like nobody ever actually improves playing in the d-league. It doesn't seem like an NBA team has any input into how their d-league team operates, partly because there isn't a 1-to-1 relationship between teams. Is it really about development, or is it just a way to keep guys playing so that there are bad players out there that can be signed in an emergency? Since there are fewer games down there, there should be more time for practice, meaning that there's time and opportunity for player development, but it's just not happening. An NHL and AHL team often run the same systems so that any players who get called up know how to play within that system, and there's a lot of communication between coaching staffs about how they want players used and developed.

I don't know much about it, but I know the NBA D-league is not as well developed a farm system as the AHL because NBA teams usually do not care for developing players at lower levels. If you can't compete, then it's off to the Euro-league for you. Personally, I can't even think of a successful person to make the transition from the D-league to becoming a solid contributer in the NBA.

There have been guys who have made the transition. If I'm not mistaken, Jomario Moon was signed by the Raptors when he was 27, and had spent his whole career up to that point in the D-League. Maybe not the most impressive player to come out of there, but he does have a full time job in the NBA now.